NOWA HUTA

The traditional animosities between Krakow and Warsaw could disappear if the Muranow and Nowa Huta districts would partner up. Additionally the past event from July 14th 1950 could be forgotten. Piotr Machen Ożański from Nowa Huta (one of the prototypes from the film "Man of Marble" by Andrzej Wajda), alongside his brigade, composed a 720-brick wall in one hour and 20 minutes, earning at the same time a 525 percent outcome,  He doubled the standards and surpassed the previous record of best foremen from Muranow. Earlier the ZMP (Union of Polish Youth) brigade of Muranów put together 14 000 bricks in 8 hours.

You might think - this partnership is a joke. Not necessarily. Both settlements are predisposed towards it. First of all - because of their age. Muranw and Nowa Huta are basically “peers”. The construction of  the first Nowa Huta buildings (on the Wanda housing estate) began June 23, 1949 on the basis of previous architectural competition. The winning design made by Franciszek Adamski was sent to Nowa Huta from the Warsaw Institute of Workers' Settlements.Previously proven solutions in Warsaw - the first post-war housing estate in Mariensztat (one of the five capital "M" - the others are Muranw, Mirw, Młynw and MDM) was transferred to Krakow soil . The architecture of Mariensztat was loosely alluded to the eighteenth-century small-town buildings (there was no point of reference in the project, no specific city was taken under consideration as an example. The project was based on ideas of how such buildings should look like.)

Nowa Huta building site. Photo from the webpage:
http://www.redakcja.pl/Tekst/Historia/530159,Nowa-huta-60-lat-ludzie.html

The creators of Muranów and Nowa Huta derive from the same style. Wanda's Estate is a small three storey residential buildings with a wooden roof construction and hipped roof, covered with ceramic tiles. One, two, or three-bedroom apartments have separate kitchens and windowed bathrooms, fitted with electricity, plumbing, and later also gas. The buildings which arose early, are easily distinguished from the others, because of their pitched roofs. Later on the directive of The Central Committee forbade them under the banner of protection laws. Similar projects such as the estate of Wanda - freestanding, three-storey houses - can be found in Muranów near Karmelicka street. Both refer to the concept of a "neighborhood unit", established in the U.S. in the 1920s. One unit consisted of 5-6 thousand inhabitants.Three units accounted for a neighborhood, the equivalent of town, where everybody knew each other and maintained neighborly relations. Within each of the districts there had to be everything a person needs in everyday life: schools, kindergartens, garages, shops,  clinics, playgrounds, a cinema, a theater. The idea was to help its residents lead an easy lifestyle, including freeing them from having to move to distant neighborhoods for shopping. Another reason was to once and for all  break the aesthetics of nineteenth-century buildings, which appeared as dark, unhealthy and ugly. From here on its already close to the idea of Le Corbusier's "machine for living", according to which architecture should serve primarily utilitarian functions. Polish counterparts were among others the creators of Muranow, represented by prewar avant-garde architects - James and Barbara Brukalscy and Bohdan Lachert. The fact that social realism had "socialist content" engraved  in the architecture adding many examples of"national forms" to it, should not obscure the fact that the original concept of the Nowa Huta district (as well as Muranów) was not a Soviet invention, as it might seem today.

Just as Muranw, was conceived as the world's only "district-monument",Nowa Huta was the first model city of the New Socialist Polish, both being some kind of utopias. The Socialist government decided to build a steelworks(in Nowa Huta) in the six-year plan for industrialization of the country, the money for this enterprise began to flow from the Soviet Union. Originally the conglomerate was to be built near Dzierżna in Silesia, it was only in 1949 that the location was changed to the village of Mogila near Krakow. Partly because of a defeat of the communist party in the elections of 1947 (which eventually were falsified) The defeat was mos severe in Krakow because of  the bourgeois and intelligentsia residing in the city. The ideological reasons were the the creation of a "new socialist man", industrialization, education of labourers, etc. But while the Nowa Huta, communist ideal industrial city, was first in the imagination of the countries authorities, and the designers matched their visions later on, the idea of "district-monument" literally derived from the rubble of  The Warsaw Ghetto was largely an original concept of Bohdan Lachert. The second fundamental difference lies in the fact that while Muranow was largely forced by practical considerations - it is difficult to accept such a huge pile of debris in the city center - in the construction of Nowa Huta near Krakow three villages were cleared : Krzeslawice, Pleszow and Mogila, paying very little in compensation to farmers expropriated. "For a morgen of land I bought my wife shoes, and got myself a cigarette holder" - as summed up one of them.

Two worlds collide. The picture from the exhibition "Nowa Huta - Cracow`s younger sister" , The Central Square at Nowa Huta, July-August 2007.

In contrast to Muranow, Nowa Huta has nothing to do with the Jewish quarter – it was established over the three villages. Its connection to the history of Jews inKrakow is resembled by only one incident - the place where Swiatowid theatre stands today was a setting for a Nazi camp for female Jews working as seamstresses and a storage during the war. It was closed down in 1943, and the women were taken away elsewhere. Where - we can only guess ... Finally - Nowa Huta was to be an industrial city. It would not exist were it not for the idea of a metallurgical plant. This city is subject to one basic function. In this respect, its resemblance is closer to than of Wolfsburg in  Germany then Muranów in Warsaw.

The steelworks in the background. The picture from the exhibition "Nowa Huta - younger Cracow`s sister", Central Square at Nowa Huta, July-August 2007

Just as in Muranów, the original architectural concept of the "old" Nowa Huta was quickly influenced by Socialist Realism. Therefore, walking through the Central Square and through th adjacent neighborhoods, you can feel like walking through  Andersa Avenue in Muranow or the western part of Muranów (Smocza Street between Zelazna and Anielewicza, The Apfelbaum square). The same arches, gates, parapets, decorative balusters on balconies, Baroque facades, antinuclear bunkers under the courtyards. The buildings in Nowa Huta, if necessary, could also serve as a defensive complex, if the gates were locked the district becomes a fort, in the gaps of the  attics shooters could be placed, rows of trees with wide streets with rows of trees make explotions less harmful even a nuclear one, and you can easily escape to a bomb shelter. These features have proven the architecture of Nowa Huta, in practice, not during World War III, but during clashes of the Militia and ZOMO units against the opposition in past riots. During the state of martial law of 1981 they could hide in doorways and escape into the courtyard, creating a real maze for the uninitiated. As Bohdan Lachert can be considered the creator of  Muranow, Tadeusz Ptaszycki can be considered the creator of Nowa Huta. Ptaszynski was also an architect, as Lachert, born in Russia, but not in Moscow, but St. Petersburg. In addition, a graduate of the same university - Warsaw University of Technology. For the first few years after the war he worked in Wroclaw, creating the Directorate of Reconstruction of the city. He, along with a team led a company by the name of Miastoprojekt and created a general plan of construction of Nowa Huta, approved in 1950. The news of the plan appeared in "The Architect" alongside Joseph Stalin's obituary. The typical socialist realism architecture of Nowa Huta was built just in over three years (1953-1956). Later projects were carried out using prefabricates made of  concrete. After the death of Stalin's socialist realism the style lost its status as the dominant doctrine, and in addition there were new technologies that allowed faster and cheaper development, and construction sites began to use cranes, making it easy to move mass-produced concrete elements.

Nowa Huta the most important ideal “model” gaining the status of a landmark, described in guidebooks and photographed by tourists from around the world, arrive at Krakow Glowny rail station, get on trams going east to see the Socialist Realism utopia. Nowa Huta rather than dominating the traditionalist city of Kraków, has been absorbed by it. Tourists go mainly to see the Central Square and the streets leading away from it, along with neighborhoods: Center A, B and C. A similar type of architecture can be seen in the Stalowe and Szkolne districts. The centre of Nowa Huta, has the best baroque urban planning principles - the central from which five large avenues dash out radially.Interestingly, even - after the change of regime-the main street names are identical to their counterparts in Muranow: Solidarity, Pope John Paul II, Andersa ...

The architects at Nowa Huta building site. Tadeusz Ptaszycki (first on the left) and Janusz Ingarden (second from the right). 

Just as in Muranów, some originally planned buildings were never constructed. For example, the theater that was to optically close Stalin Square (now Central Square) or the monumental city hall in the Aleja Roz Ave., which writer Maciej Miezian decribes in his guidebook to the district (Publisher: “Bezdroza”, Kraków 2004) - was to be a cross between the city hall issued by Hetman Zamoyski in Zamość and the Pharos lighthouse in Alexandria built by order of Alexander the Great.

Central Square at the beginning of 60`s. The picture from the exhibition "Nowa Huta - younger Cracow`s sister", Central Square at Nowa Huta, July-August 2007

In total, the first 10 years of Nowa Huta took in over 200 000 inhabitants. 85,000 settled permanently. All flats in Nowa Huta had - from the perspective of time and in comparison to the neglected tenements buildings of Krakow Nowa Huta had high standards: private bathrooms with hot water, flushing toilets, central heating and gas. Despite this, living in Nowa Huta was regarded as something worse then living in Krakow. That opinion is still accurate till this day, it reflects the much lower housing prices in this location, which are not sanctioned, because Nowa Huta - as opposed to other outlying neighborhoods - is very well communicated with the city center. On the other hand, Nowa Huta is becoming more fashionable. Muranow could learn from Nowa Huta (as well as from its mistakes) how to effectively promote itself. Already in the 90s representatives of arts and science circles of Krakow's drew attention to the paradoxes of Nowa Huta and called for the presentation of the city-district as a "ready theme park" and "museum" for foreign tourists. Password "museum" quickly took on overtones of commercial business with Crazy Guides, driving tourists through Nowa Huta in old Trabant and Nysa cars and collecting a few hundred zlotys for it afterwards. For the tour, included a visit to an authentic apartment decorated in PRL style a meal and dancing in an “old school” restaurant called "Stylowa". The convention, which the Crazy Guides adopted, awakened controversy from the beginning, especially because of the approach to the population of Nowa Huta, making them feel like "a population of a zoo". This kind of thinking is a threat to all those hwo will want to promote Muranow. It is easy to ignore residents in promotional actions, especially when they are mostly older people as it is in Muranów – They are often reluctant to interact with the newcomers. It's just that such an instrumental approach, will cause many losses of many opportunities, not only in the means of ventures and actions, but in access to authentic history as well, which you will not find in any archive.

Translation: Maciej Mahler